


Fear is Like a Weed (Better Pull It)

by CrazyCranberry



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: American Scientists, Billy is Alive, Hawkins Indiana, Hurt Billy Hargrove, Post Stranger Things Season 3, Russian Scientists - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 15:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrazyCranberry/pseuds/CrazyCranberry
Summary: Billy's dead and the Mind Flayer's gone...except neither of these things are true and Billy's a little pissed off about it. Kind of. Sort of.





	Fear is Like a Weed (Better Pull It)

“And what came after?” The doctor leaned closer, glasses sliding forward on his oil slick nose. His pen hovered above the clipboard, hand unsteady as he waited for an answer. Billy watched him squirm from the examination table, watched the white pen in the white hand in the white coat on the white shirt white walls white floor––

Everything was so damn _bright_ and the black of his blood stung with it. They’d told him the creature was gone, bled out of him in dark rivulets across the mall floor. They said it’d changed him, that he was special now––worth studying, worth something. “Billy?” the doctor pressed, somehow more tense than before. Billy licked his lips, grip on the table beneath him tightening a fraction before he flexed his fingers. Breathed in. Breathed out.

“Nothing,” he muttered, voice hoarse from disuse. He didn’t know how long he’d been here––a week, a month. Too long.

“There must’ve been _something_?”

“I just didn’t fucking _exist_ anymore, no goddamn light at the end of the tunnel––”

“Yes, but––”

“That thing ripped me apart and then there was nothing, alright! So sorry to disappoint you,” Billy spat, baring his teeth. Something underneath his skin was burning and he wanted to claw it all off. He could feel it coursing through his veins as he lay awake at night, pulsing with every beat of his heart. On every spastic thud he thought it’d tear its way out of his chest all _Alien_ like leaving him still and cold again.

He looked back up at the doctor from under long lashes, molars grinding so hard he thinks they’ll turn to dust in his mouth. He wants to kick the man to the floor, crack his skull like a melon and watch the splatter of red on white. He wants to scream, loud and long and violent, until his vocal chords whisp like confetti out of his mouth. He _wants_.

The metal table groaned as his fingers curled into a fist, steel folding like paper. “ _Hargrove_!” the doctor shouts, back to the door as he pounds on the keypad in desperation. Billy sees the fear, inching up and over the quaking man like a weed. He hopped down, didn't flinch at the chill of the tile on his bare feet. There was no roar of blood in his ears, despite how hard his heart was beating. There was a quiet, like when you miss a step on the way down the stairs and everything in your body seizes for one agonizing moment and the world goes dead except the rush of the fall never comes and it’s just so _fucking_ quiet and he’s suspended in that in-between––

Just like that he drops, like a puppet with its strings cut. _The Between_. When he wasn’t quite Billy and not quite...not Billy. The world came rushing back and there’s an alarm going, door to the room swinging on its hinges. The doctor was nowhere to be seen. He could hear rapid footsteps, probably guards, and the static of their walkie talkies, voices frantic. Some spoke in Russian, some in English. He curled up where he lay, knees drawn to his chest, nails digging into the skin of his calves to ground him.

He thinks the doctors lied. The creature hadn’t bled out of him––wasn’t mopped up by an unsuspecting janitor and poured out into a drain. Washed away with the rest of Hawkin’s shit. It was still _here_ , burrowed down into his marrow and making his bones ache. But as two guards wrenched him up and dragged him out, he was suddenly sure that he’s not the only one who’s changed. Whatever it is, it had...mutated, didn’t feel like it was trying to constantly pry Billy’s brain out his skull. He thinks that if he plays it right, he might be able to control _it_ this time around. Billy was a dead weight between them, head hanging down, blonde curls swaying into his line of sight. They dumped him in his cell and slammed the door, deadbolt grating shut.

He made his decision later that night after punching a dent into the concrete floor––picking at the rubble until his nails broke. The creature seemed to be here to stay, burning through him day and night, and if that was his fate so be it. But Billy Hargrove was not going to spend the rest of his life in an 8x8 box, forced to answer stupid fucking questions asked by stupid fucking doctors.

He and the creature were going to get out of here. He just needed a plan.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so, I'm jumping on the "Billy is Alive" bandwagon. I'm not sure if I'll continue this piece or not, but who knows, I've always been bad at letting one-shots stay one-shots. Any comments/critiques are greatly appreciated--let me know what you think! I hope you like it :D


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